Persuasive Communication - How Audiences Decide. 2nd Edition

Types of Audience Decisions 51

make oversight decisions when they decide whether to approve an employee’s creative new

product proposal. U.S. presidents make oversight decisions when, as Commander in Chief, they

decide whether to permit their top military offi cers to implement their plans for battle.

Principals make oversight decisions in order to protect the interests of the projects, organi-

zations, or even countries for which they are responsible. Agents seek oversight decisions from

principals when they attempt to gain approval for their past performance or to obtain permission

to implement their plans for the future. Documents and presentations agents produce in order to

elicit oversight decisions from principals include strategic plans , annual reports , marketing plans , progress

reports , and operating reviews.

In the following letter, we see how President Abraham Lincoln approached making an impor-

tant oversight decision during the American Civil War. The letter is the president’s response to a

22-page plan of attack that his top general, George B. McClellan, submitted to him for approval.

The general presented his plan as an alternative to a plan Lincoln himself had proposed a few days

earlier. Lincoln was not persuaded by the general’s plan, in part because he had been disappointed

by the general’s poor performance in the prior year.

In the letter, Lincoln enumerates the criteria for his oversight decision in a list of questions about

the objectives, competitive strategy, implementation, and risk mitigation of the general’s plan. He says

he will agree to the general’s plan if the general can demonstrate his plan has a better chance than Lin-

coln’s of meeting those criteria. Although the general never addressed Lincoln’s decision criteria, the

President reluctantly permitted the general’s plan to be implemented out of respect for his top offi cer.

LINCOLN’S RESPONSE TO GENERAL MCCLELLAN’S PLAN

Executive Mansion, Washington

Feb. 3, 1862

To Major General McClellan

My dear Sir:

You and I have distinct, and different plans for a movement of the Army

of the Potomac—yours to be down the Chesapeake, up the Rappahannock

to Urbana, and across land to the terminus of the Railroad on the York River

—mine to move directly to a point on the Railroad South West of Manassas.

If you will give me satisfactory answers to the following questions, I shall

gladly yield my plan to yours.

1st.Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expenditure of time, and

moneythan mine?

2nd.Wherein is a victory more certainby your plan than mine?

3rd.Wherein is a victory more valuableby your plan than mine?